HOUSTON – Currently, there are more than 300,000 cold cases in the country, of those, 20,000 are in Texas, and many of these victims are from minority communities.
Solvable is a new multi-platform series that gives time and energy to cold cases and missing person cases that might not have ever received media attention... until now.
To assist law enforcement agencies across the state of Texas with cold case investigations, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton created the Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit in March 2021.
“I think that people in Texas deserve that justice. I just started realizing there was no central location that really focused on it. And a lot of these local counties didn’t have the resources, they didn’t have the expertise. I felt like there needed to be a statewide repository for expertise and for information, and then hopefully, a prosecution team, investigation team,” explained Attorney General Ken Paxton. “They’re not simple cases. They’re difficult cases that take time to resolve. In my opinion, everyone that you resolve brings justice and brings closure for a family that really is looking for that.”
“Before this unit existed, a lot of these cases were sitting on a shelf and not getting any attention, not because the agents, the agencies didn’t want to work these cases. They just quite, frankly, didn’t have the resources,” said Mindy Montford, senior counsel for the Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit.
Many of these cases have been through hundreds of investigators throughout the decades.
“So, by the time it gets to us, it really has been through a lot of people and we’re kind of the last stop. I think success for a lot of these families is just that somebody is actually looking at this case with a lens in 2024 as opposed to 1989 because things have changed. Even testing that was done three years ago, you should pick that case back up and try to test it again, because that’s how fast technology changes,” explained Montford.
As thousands of Texans wait for answers in their loved ones’ cases, investigators with Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit continue to work.
“There’s hope that we’re there to provide,” explained Paxton.
The unit takes on cases when asked by law enforcement agencies who reach out to them for assistance. The unit is hoping to soon add a fourth investigator. Right now, it works with a task force made up of retired homicide detectives.
It’s also launching a new partnership with Texas State University that will allow four interns to work on two cold cases a year. These students will have the chance to solve these cases.
If you have a cold case or a missing persons case you want us to examine, send us an email at solvable@kprc.com.